While I am getting back in the groove, here is a little “true life adventure” that happened to me back in 1987, for you reading pleasure…
It was about two in the morning. I was driving south on 24th Street NW towards the Lincoln Memorial. It was a beautiful evening and I had the windows up but the sun roof open and I was listening to my favorite mix tape on the stereo. I had been on a date with my then-girlfriend. We ended up at her apartment in Georgetown and I was going back home to my apartment in Alexandria. I was feeling… well… introspective.
I remember thinking to myself, “What are you doing going home at two in the morning?” It wasn’t that we were having any particular problems in our relationship. It was just that there wasn’t anything special about it. So much so, that I had decided to get up and go home at two in the morning rather than stay the night. I remember trying to decide whether I should feel good about taking control of my life by making this particular statement or whether I should feel angry that she hadn’t objected.
I pulled up to the traffic light at Constitution Avenue. The cars in the lanes of traffic to my right blocked my view to the West. I made eye contact with the driver of the taxi next to me and then turned my gaze back to the world in front of me. I could see the Lincoln Memorial. The orange glow of the street lights gave everything a surreal appearance. I looked up and saw that the traffic signal had changed to green and I accelerated into the intersection, and then… time stopped.
I find that driving is very conducive to thinking. I don’t know whether it is because of the monotony of sound as the pavement rolls under the wheels, or the solitude, or… The point is that sometimes I get lost in thought and realize that miles have gone by that I have no memory of. Almost as if I had been driving on automatic pilot. This was one of those times.
I wasn’t quite sure where I was but I did know that the tape had stopped. I tried to reverse it, start it over, eject it… nothing worked. Depressing. My tape player seemed to be broken… and it had eaten one of my favorite tapes! In my depression I looked up and noticed the man staring in the window.
I reached for the controls to activate the electric motor that raised and lowered the driver’s window. I pressed the “Down” button… and nothing happened. What was going on here? Had my car had some kind of massive electrical system failure? I pulled the lever to open the door and looked at the man. “Are you alright?” he asked.
Who was this man and what did he really want? I said, “I’m fine” and closed the door. I returned to the puzzle of my cars troubles. I noticed that the engine was no longer running. I turned the key and predictably nothing happened. I sighed. This wasn’t getting me anywhere. I took the keys from the ignition, opened the door, and got out. The man from the window came back up to me and said, “Didn’t you see him coming?”
I had no idea what he was talking about, so I asked, “Do I know you?” He said, “I was driving the cab in the lane next to you. Didn’t you see him coming? He ran the red light.”
Sure enough, he did look familiar and there was the cab idling at the curb. “What are you talking about?”
“You must have spun around three times before you stopped. I’m amazed you survived.”
I finally paused long enough to wonder where I was and take in the scene. I was standing on the southeast corner of 24th Street NW and Pennsylvania Avenue. My car was pointing North and it was about ten yards off the street into the grass. The taxi driver had apparently gone down to the Lincoln Memorial to turn around as he was also pointing North, but at least his vehicle was on the street itself.
I needed to sit down and figure out what had happened. I walked around to the trunk of my car and hopped up onto it. The taxi driver joined me. He was rambling on about this mysterious guy who had run the light. I needed to think, to clear my head. I quickly shut him out.
Others came by. Soon there was a small circle of people standing around the trunk of my car, the taxi driver entertaining them all with his story of the guy who had run the light and how I had spun around three times before I stopped. I had no idea what he was talking about, but the crowd was enthralled.
A police car pulled up behind the taxi and an officer got out and started to walk over to us. I turned to the taxi driver and said, “You’re probably going to have to move your car.” The officer said, “Did anybody survive?”
Why wouldn’t anybody start making sense?
Nobody answered.
The officer pressed on. “Did anybody see the driver of this car?”
“This is my car, officer,” I said.
“Are you alright? Do you want to go to the hospital?”
What was this sudden interest everyone was taking in my health? I replied that I was fine. “Alright then, but I still need to ask you some questions for my report. Could you step over here a minute?”
I stepped away from the social circle that had formed around the back of my car and moved a few feet closer to the street with the officer.
“So… Tell me how this happened,” he said, holding a clipboard of report forms in one hand and gesturing towards my car with his pen in the other. Instinctively, my gaze followed his lead and landed on my car. For the first time I saw it. Everything from the firewall forwards was crushed. That would explain why the tape player stopped — no battery — and why the engine wouldn’t start — no engine. The front bumper, I could see, was in the middle of the intersection. What in the world was going on here? I said, “I really have no idea, officer.”
The taxi driver had been listening and came over. Once again he started into his story. For the first time it started to make sense…
The next day I went to the impound yard to survey the damage.
You can see how, while sitting on the trunk, I would have thought that everything was fine…
…and you can see how it was possible to survive…
…but the front end is barely recognizable.
Apparently I did spin around at least half way — the car was facing the opposite direction, after all — and when the rear end of the car hit the curb, it was going sideways fast enough to snap off the wheel on that side.